I’ve seen copilot spit out garbage dozens of lines long for something I swore must be one or two stdlib functions. Yep, it was, after reading some real documentation and using my brain. It was some NodeJS stuff, which I never work with. Don’t get me wrong, I still find it a helpful tool, but it is not at all a good, seasoned programmer— it is an algorithm predicting the next token based on the current tokens.
> I still find it a helpful tool, but it is not at all a good, seasoned programmer
How quickly the goalposts move! Two years ago it was "AI will never be able to write code", now we're complaining that "AI is not a seasoned programmer". What are we going to be complaining about, two years from now?
I’m not really complaining, I’m saying it’s useful, but don’t pretend it’s better than what it is. It’s cruise control on a car— makes long drives better, but doesn’t literally drive for you.
